“What if Pete Steele fronted an ’80s synth band?” is not a question that most people ask themselves very often. The answer “they'd sound a bit like This Violent Mind”, then, has probably found itself entirely without application until this moment. Deep, hollow-sounding vocals and jangly synth melodies make for an interesting juxtaposition, if nothing else.
So how does it sound? Well, a bit odd, to be honest. The vocals are strong and perfectly competent, the synthesiser fairly engaging, but it doesn’t quite come together. For a band with three guitarists (lead, rhythm and bass) there’s very little guitar in evidence. Backing vocals aside, this gives the music a ‘one man and his synth’ feel that simply doesn’t work without strong drumming. Either way, there's something missing.
Even so, this isn’t a bad album. The highlights are up-tempo tracks like
Disconnection, where the synth handles rhythm duties and lets the vocals get on with the melody. This arrangement covers for the shortcomings mentioned earlier, to an extent, and gives the band a more trad-goth, Sisters-esque sound. At the other end of the spectrum there’s the mournful dirge
Far, which is downright soporific. Two or three slow tracks really drag the album down, and since there are only eight in total it might have been an idea to ditch the dirges and release
Witch House as an EP.
If there’s one thing This Violent Mind are good at, it’s challenging perceptions. Yes, people
are still making ’80s synth records. Yes, sometimes they
are kind of fun. The realisation that people are still writing songs about dragons (witness
Summer Skies) may come as a bit of a shock, but if you have a low tolerance for cheesy fantasy lyrics then goth really isn’t your genre.
Flawed but by no means awful,
Witch House has a core of good songs (
Stop,
In the Witch House,
Disconnection and Blood) which hint at greater things to come. TVM sound at times like the Human League, and at times like
Pretty Hate Machine - era Nine Inch Nails. They’ve already come a long way from debut album
The Storm, and if they can focus on producing more upbeat tracks and stay away from six-minute tranquilisers, they could soon find themselves with quite a following. Look out for them playing a ‘Whitby’ near you at some point in the future.
http://www.irkar.com/tvm/
